New agreement supports research visits of Indian top researchers in ERC teams

On 6 October 2017, on the margins of the European Union-India Summit in New Delhi, an agreement was concluded between the EU and India to encourage research visits of Indian top researchers in teams funded by the European Research Council (ERC) in Europe. In line with the ERC global approach, this is the tenth international initiative of this kind, which comes at a time when the ERC also marks its tenth anniversary.

Tomasz Kozłowski, EU Ambassador to India, and Dr Rajiv Sharma of the Scientific Engineering Research Board (SERB) signed the agreement, in the presence of ERC President Jean-Pierre Bourguignon. The initiative will encourage Indian top talent (early career researchers, national post-doctoral fellows and doctoral candidates), pre-selected by the SERB, to join ERC-funded teams in Europe for periods of up to one year.

So far, some 43 Indian researchers have been awarded ERC grants, which makes Indians rank third in terms of ERC grantees of non-European nationality.

These agreements, called implementing arrangements, are already running with nine other countries across the globe: the US, South Korea, Argentina, China, Japan, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, and Canada. Thanks to these arrangements, scientists who are based outside of Europe and are supported by non–European funding agencies can temporarily join research teams led by ERC grant holders.